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22
LECTURE I.
were visible. But their familiarity with the cursive character enabled them to restore the text with an accuracy of which no competent critic can entertain a doubt. When I speak of our being able to read and comprehend the language, you will not understand me as implying that all Egyptologists are equally learned and skilful. Nor are all Egyptian texts equally easy of translation.[1] As in all languages, some are very easy and others extremely difficult. There is one long and most interesting document, of which I shall have occasion to speak later on, which will, I fear, long continue to baffle the efforts of translators.
Publication of Egyptian Texts.
The progress of the study was greatly retarded at first by the difficulty of obtaining authentic copies of
- ↑ Other questions than those of a purely philological nature often arise in reference to the texts translated. I do not quarrel with the translations given by M. de Rougé and other scholars of the great texts describing the invasion of Egypt in the time of Seti II. But I have always considered the identification of the foreign invaders with the Achaeans, Tyrrhenians, Sardinians and Sicilians, as in the highest degree improbable. Nor do I believe that the Danai or the Pelasgi have been really identified under hieroglyphic spelling. When we reflect that Deutschland is called Allemagne in French and Germany in English, that the people called Dutch by us are called Hollandais by the French, that the Greeks only knew themselves as Hellenes, that the name Egypt was unknown to the inhabitants of that country, and that its real name, Kamit, was unknown to Greeks and Romans, we should be very cautious in identifying names on the mere strength of similarity in sound.
